Readin' Pretty

I’m sure that you’ve seen these all over the design blogs:




They are Penguin’s Clothbound Classics series featuring the designs of Coralie Bickford-Smith. Basically they have taken a collection of wonderful classic books and suped them up with bold colors and fun cover art. Each cover features a pattern design significant to the story (Alice in Wonderland sports flamingos, Oliver Twist’s are clocks). Each design is stamped onto linen with beautiful matte foil.

Originally only available in the UK, they have sloooooowly been released in the US over the last year. You can purchase them on amazon.com or in some Anthroplogie stores. My mom ordered a bunch of them for my birthday back in June. And then low and behold, another three showed up on my doorstep this week. Five new designs were recently released.

I can’t decide if I actually want to read them and risk creasing the pretty little spines or not. For now I am using them as art. They live on top of my armoire with a vintage suitcase that I picked up at a junk market last winter and my stainless steel curly-cue initials from Ballard and Design circa 1999.

{book images from here}